


Freedom

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 10:26:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6191437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik has been property since before he was born.  Altair wants to change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Malik is a prostitute against his will (reason is up to you) and Altair is his safe harbour in a life where very little really belongs to him, especially after those nights when he has to deal with the clients he hates or the ones that are prone to playing rough. Altair finally convinces Malik to run away with him, that freedom is worth the risk (that he deserves better than all this). But it doesn't work. They're caught and these people have a zero-tolerance policy for runaways.

There was a window painted onto the south wall of Malik’s room, a grand, picturesque scene so brilliantly rendered that if he sat very still with his back against the grand four poster bed (reserved only for meeting with clients) he could almost imagine that he was outside. When he was very still, he imagined he could remember the kiss of sunlight and the soft kiss of sweet-fresh-air, and that his ears were full of the noises of freedom. 

\--

The artist had been hired (but not purchased, and that was an important distinction to make) when Malik was still skinny-and-slim, pulling walk-in clients out of the common room and offering them parse pleasures. They happened to cross paths the hall full of cubicles where men with little money got to see but not touch; the artist with speckles of paint all across his hands and face, his jacket pulled around him like a desperate attempt at warding himself against the acid-stink of sweat and semen.

“Are you lost?” Malik asked.

He expected that the man might deny it or agree, and either way it was not a matter that concerned him. The artist (as they were all told) was not to be considered a client as he was being paid rather than paying and therefore they were to treat him as they might treat any upper house staff. “I’m an artist,” he said and then cleared his throat as if aware that he had said something obvious and stupid, “uh, Altair. I’m not lost. The—uh, the bald guy said I should enjoy a complimentary visit, he gave me this.” Then he pulled a rumbled pass (traditionally given to first time customers that were not satisfied by the pleasure they received) and looked even more embarrassed. 

Malik sighed, “man or woman?”

“I’m a man.”

It took more effort than he wanted to admit to keep from rolling his eyes. A free pass didn’t necessarily mean the word of the idiot artist would get him punished but it was best not to tempt fate when he could avoid it. “I mean,” he said with utter civility, “do you want a man or a woman?”

“Oh.”

The artist proceeded to say nothing; rather than communicate his preference he stared very pointedly at Malik and smoothed the ticket out between his stained fingers. After a pause, Malik ran his tongue across his lips, “I’m available,” seemed far easier than trying to prompt the lifeless brain that lay in the basin of the artist’s skull into life. 

“Oh, ok. Good.” 

Malik plucked the ticket out of his hand so he could look at the fine print before he motioned Altair after him. The hostess for Malik’s section took the ticket from him and gave him a long ribbon to hang over the hook outside the curtained off alcove. Altair slid inside of the little space with him, arms still across his chest, obviously confused and unnerved to find only a chair and four walls. 

“It’s not very welcoming,” Altair said. Then he flinched at the words, “I guess it doesn’t have to be.” And he finally unfolded his arms to rub his palms down his jacket front and said, “so what happens now?”

It was surely a test from Robert to see if Malik could make it through such a ridiculous encounter without insulting his customer. The man seemed to find Malik’s discomfort with his circumstances to be something like a personal comedy routine; he was deeply fond of showing up to watch him work while none of the other whores received half as much attention. So he said, “the ticket you were given entitles you to a blow job and allows you to touch me with my clothes on.” It was not the cheapest ticket they gave out but it was far from the best complimentary service.

“Oh,” Altair said.

“Standing or sitting?” Malik asked.

“Oh,” again, “I’ll sit.” He nearly sat with his pants still secured and only, at the last moment, realized that he might benefit from them being loosened. He sat in the seat with more nerves and worry than Malik felt as he got to his knees. They had barely even started, hardly made it farther than enticing Altair to full hardness when the man’s fingers touched his hair with more genuine kindness than was tolerable and he said, “thank you.”

\--

The artist worked his way through the rooms of the house the way Malik worked his way up the ladder. His upward trajectory had little to do with his own wishes and more to do with the careful diet and exercise routine that Robert had saddled him with. The combination of good food and conditioning left him as something uniquely desirable. 

“I bred your Mother,” Robert was fond of saying. “She was not fit for the floor,” how unfortunate his Mother was not pretty enough to be a whore, “I had a man I was especially fond of. He kept my stables. It was simple breeding, I needed his temperament, her colors and I hoped for an improvement on their looks. You have proven to be a very worthwhile investment.” Robert liked to touch him, liked to rub his fingers across Malik’s face and fist his hand around his arm. He liked to rub his palms up and down across bare skin and leer at him with filthy desire. “It is a shame your brother was not. I suppose, a stable hand is never a bad thing to have. I would have liked another like you.”

Malik was seventeen, filling out like a real man, when Robert put his (technical) virginity up for auction. The floor was a chaos of noise, each of the virgins (five in all) were presented naked for inspection, each of them with ribbons looped around their necks, ready to be prodded and poked and assessed. 

At seventeen, there were few fates that seemed worse to him than the inevitably of his life. He looked out at the men that lapped their flat-pink-tongues across their bristly-lips and thought of nothing but how badly he wished to have the means to slaughter them all. 

_Contempt_ , Robert liked to say to him, _contempt_ was the set of his face when he looked at the men that came with handfuls of bills to buy his body. And it made them angry and the angrier they were the more they would like to hurt him, and they would hurt him (that was assured) but they would _enjoy_ it and so Robert allowed his contempt. He encouraged it with his sideways smiles and his wandering hands, presenting Malik to interested parties as his prize stallion (or _mare_ if you like), so carefully bred.

\--

The fool artist threw the auction into an uproar that shook the walls for days. He stood when the auctioneer called Malik’s name and said, “I’ll relinquish my fee, I’ll paint everything for free.” But the words were so eager and so fierce and the mirror of hatred that showed on his face so vital that every fat man rich with gold was calling for his expulsion. 

Robert nodded to the auctioneer who declared Malik sold and moved on to the next over the screaming complaints of others.

But it was in a private room with a four poster bed when Robert said, “you would not earn enough to pay for first right,” to Altair (the idiot) and considered the artist and his paint-speckled clothes and the sketched-out design for the window scene he was painting on the south wall of the room. “Second,” Robert said. “For second right, I will provide the materials that you paint with—I cannot have you using second rate materials—and you will finish all the work for free and return what portion of the fee has already been paid.”

Altair looked at Malik, like he meant to gauge how he felt about such a proposition. Malik did move his face to answer the unspoken query because he knew, even before the question was asked that Robert intended to have him first. It seemed inevitable to him (in that moment) so that he was able to keep his face entirely without expression when, “who would have him first?”

Was answered with a smooth smile and, “I will.”

Altair was furious, tight lines from his grim clenched jaw to his curled up fists but he must have realized the futility of trying. He said, “fine.”

\--

Robert fucked him with deliberate cruelty, as if he meant to ruin Malik before he even had a chance to offer him out for profit. When he was finished (but not pulled free of Malik’s body) he wrapped his arms around Malik and held him in his lap, his wet mouth a gaping noise of rushed breath and putrid stink so close to the back of his left ear. He said, “you’re _property_. Men can’t _love_ property and property cannot love.”

There was hardly enough substance left in Malik’s whole body, hardly a safe enough corner of his mind to make sense of the words and nothing at all left to offer contemptuous rebuttal to them. He could not loosen his blood-streaked teeth from where they’d bitten through his lips to speak in understanding or denial of the words. 

Robert’s hands were large and soft—the hands of a wealthy man unsullied by manual labor—as they ran down his chest, belly and slid over his hips to grip the inside of his thighs. “I am a man of my word, the painter can have you next. Should I stay and watch so I know you please him?” Robert pushed at him like he meant to shove him off his lap but pulled him back again before they could separate. “Maybe not just yet,” he said. “Maybe I’ve got a little bit left in me.”

\--

The painter collected his reward when the bruises faded on Malik’s body. Robert was cruel but he was a fair-minded business man. A deal had been struck and quality merchandise had to be offered. He kept Malik under supervision to convalesce and heal before he sent for the painter.

Altair was awkward in Malik’s fine whore room. Standing half a floor away with his scrubbed-clean hands wringing one at the other. He started with, “I’m sorry. I meant to make it better and I think I made it worse.”

Malik didn’t meet his eyes but looked at the floor for a moment. There was no safety in a house made of ears and peepholes so he did not address the words but motion to the bed, “whenever it would please you,” very near to the way he’d been taught. 

“Can I kiss you?” Altair asked.

“You can do whatever you like,” Malik said. 

Altair was as unbearable with his kindness as Robert had been with his maliciousness. The softness of the bed on Malik’s back and the tenderness of the hand that touched his skin were no less painful (albeit, far less physically) than the roughness he had already experienced. There was no revelation to be found in Altair’s attempt at civility save for the inevitable realization that Malik’s body was not now (and never had been, and never would _be_ ) his own. 

\--

After the unhappy affair of his first week as a proper prostitute, Malik fell into the routine of it. Excellent performance merited excellent reviews allowed him rights that the lower level prostitutes did not afford. 

He managed (through no specific effort on his part) to secure a repeat customer and that victory allowed him time in the gardens behind the house. For half an hour, every two days, he was allowed to sit in the sunshine and listen to the birds sing. He could smell the stables and the flowers and the green grass (cool and wet) beneath his bare feet. 

It was in the gardens, behind the house, that he met his brother. He was a tall thin boy with unruly hair and a dirty face that kept his shoulders up and tight and his hands tucked in against his sides. When he came, he crept out in dirty shoes with filthy hands and said, “I heard we were brothers.”

Malik saw nothing of himself in Kadar (so he said his name was) and no reason to humor the attempts the boy made to make friends with him. He was allowed to speak to the lower staff (the slaves like Kadar who were not paid but owned) and the boy wore him down after weeks of trying. “You will get a beating if you keep sneaking away from your work.”

“Wouldn’t be the first one,” Kadar said. He never touched Malik; no lower staff were allowed to touch the whores. But he looked at him with something that wasn’t filmed with lust or troubled by love born of the unfairness of their lives. “Hey,” he said when Malik earned a second repeat customer and an additional day in the garden, “The painter sent this for you.” He slid a little slip of paper from under his palm to under Malik’s so carefully that it seemed impossible anyone might have seen it. 

\--

Malik did not allow himself feelings for the painter; Kadar read him the notes that were sent to him. The endless litany of well-wishes and sweet-thoughtful-things. In his room (where he met clients) he looked at the notes that asked him questions about the things he wanted, the things he loved, the things he wished to see in his life, and out in the garden, Malik told Kadar the answers that he knew.

I want nothing, I love nothing, I wish for nothing; and for a while it was true.

But Altair snuck into the garden wearing Kadar’s clothes like a poor costume and sat at his side with their fingertips brushing together and he said, “I’ve seen it in your face; they have tried to suffocate you but you have not given up yet. I can paint anything in the window of your room, I only need to know what you would like to see.”

Since the man was foolish, Malik said, “Robert owns me; he has owned me since I was born. I cannot want anything because he will take it from me, or he will offer it to me and I will not give him the satisfaction.”

“I’ll free you,” Altair said when they were seventeen year old boys, in the garden, touching fingertips together. And the words were so full of _truth_ that it seemed impossible to believe they would never be true. “I will. You’ll see.”

“I’ll never want you,” Malik said like a mirror of that steely truth. He meant it straight through his whole body and Altair must have known it was true the way he knew he could free Malik because he nodded his head.

He didn’t fight, but he said, “I know.”

\--

They grew up in separate rooms, Altair with an endless supply of little notes and a constant presence in the periphery of Malik’s life. His presence only a direct interruption the week one of the clients broke Malik’s wrist and he was confined to bed and short walks. They used the time to send Altair to paint the window mural on the south wall. 

He painted in silence under the watch of the guard Robert sent to protect his property. But everything he wished to say was caught in the brushstrokes of his magnificent mural. All the promises on his little slips of paper were brilliantly rendered in the vivid colors of moving life he covered the south wall in. Every night before he left for the day, he collected his things and stole sideways glances at Malik while the guard (long since bored) waited impatiently for his freedom. 

\--

Altair came back to him as a client when they were twenty one years old. Neither of them had the sense to pretend like the moment hadn’t been inevitable, but Altair touched his bare shoulders like he had been _longing_ for the chance ever since he’d finished the murals and had been sent out of the house four months ago.

“What would you like?” Malik asked, “you have,” and he looked at the ribbon that Altair brought him, “an hour and full privileges.”

“Do you like your window?” Altair asked him. The question must have been a searing coal on his tongue all these years because they tumbled out of his mouth so fast that he couldn’t catch them when they started to fall. The shift of his body put them close-close together and Malik tipped his head so they were all but brushing mouths together. The closeness was more invasive than the others; the ones that didn’t love-but-just fucked him. Altair’s hands were rough-callous masking dire gentleness; Malik’s touch against him was not so sweet.

“You have to use me,” Malik said, “or they will know. What do you want?”

Altair kissed him. “Pretend with me,” he whispered, “that we aren’t stuck like this.” It was the most selfish thing ever asked of him (far and away worse than anything Robert had demanded). But Malik closed his eyes and put his hands on Altair’s face to pull him to kiss him. They kissed like real lovers must have kissed, with greedy hands and raw want. 

\--

Altair came again, after that, every two months. He came with fresh bruises and old sutured scars on his body. He came each time with money and no time, buying out skinny ribbons for short visits and full privileges. He lay on Malik’s bed (naked and golden) sated from simple pleasures and saying nothing like promises as he made an art of finding ways to make Malik’s every day more miserable than the last.

Oh, but the lost and stolen hours of his life spent laying on the bed pretending Altair was his lover and not his client were the same happy illusion of the mural on his wall. The notion of every unwanted (unspoken) wish he might have had.

When he could stand the mystery no longer, when he had Altair spread out beneath him, pinned down with hands around his elbows and his legs straddled across his ribs, he said, “what art has given you this body? What painting requires these bruises?”

Altair smiled at him but there was no happiness in his eyes. He sat up, both of his long-thick-arms around Malik’s body and his cheek pressed together to Malik’s he said, “I don’t paint anymore. I kill people for money.” And he tipped his head back just far enough that Malik could see him.

“You must not be very good.” But he kissed away the lines of worry on Altair’s forehead.

\--

“Fifty three,” Altair whispered in his ear, the next time. “There’s fifty three guards.”

\--

But the time after, Altair said, “leave with me.”

Malik kissed him with his thumbs rubbing up and down across his collarbone. He said, “no. We’d both be killed.”

\--

And the time after, “leave with me.”

\--

And the time after, “leave with me.”

\--

And again, with desperation like still-fading bruises across Malik’s back where a client had taken a notion to beat him with a strap. Altair was furious with a shake in his whole body and a film of wetness in his eyes that Malik couldn’t bring himself to feel (or might never cease feeling) and he said, “I can get you out. I swear it.”

Malik rolled his eyes at him, “you couldn’t, and even if you could, what good am I? I can’t read, I can’t cook, I can’t—I haven’t even done more than walk and lay on my back since I was a child. I am useless in that world.”

Altair did not argue with him (though he wanted to), the time was short enough they couldn’t waste another breath arguing about things that would never happen.

\--

Out in the gardens, Kadar (tall and thick, like a tree), said, “why don’t you go with him?”

“Do you think, sometimes, what our lives would be like if were born as free men? We could have been anything, we could have been everything we wished to be—but there are no wishes for us here. We are property and property cannot be loved and cannot love.” Malik sighed, “if he tries to take me, we’ll all die.”

“Death is not the worst thing that could happen,” Kadar whispered back.

\--

Altair came, when they were both twenty-four, and not much at all like the boys they had been at seventeen, and stood with a ribbon clenched in his fist and white-knuckled-murder in every line of his body. 

Malik was _exhausted_ from being poorly used. There were welts on his wrists and burns on his ankles. His body ached like an open wound, the flesh felt peeled away from the cracked bones and he was _weak_ against every abrasive stimuli like the soft drape of his robe and the worry-and-hate that made Altair’s lip curl up. 

“Please,” Altair said, “come with me. I can get you out.”

(He thought of Kadar, in the garden, saying ‘death is not the worst that can happen’.) Malik nodded because he could not move his jaw, he could not force words over the raw, red, agony of his throat. And Altair did not grab him and hug him but took his hand and led him out of the room.

\--

Altair killed the old man at the door who looked toward the sound of the door opening. He pushed the man’s limp body against the building where it wouldn’t be detected so easily and they ran down the street, through the city that Malik had never seen. They ran through roads, ducked between buildings and followed a river down and down and down until he was certain his legs would break from the effort.

They found sanctuary in an abandoned hovel, with a floor covered in filth and a nest of blankets in the corner. 

Altair gave him water in a cracked cup. “Tomorrow we’ll leave the city,” he said. “There are men here that owe me a favor for the services I have done for them.”

“You live here?” Malik asked, “you have the money to buy me but not to buy a proper room?”

Altair smiled, “you were more important.” His face smoothed out and he was nothing but a stupid kid again, looking at Malik with open wonder. There was no reason (in the whole of the world) that Malik could think of to justify the devotion that brought Altair back to him. “You’re free,” he said, “you don’t belong to anyone anymore.”

Malik was a king, in a dirty hovel, with a court of only one and kingdom comprised of piles of dirt. He said, “for tonight,” because it was a compromise between Altair’s truth and his own. Robert would find them (certainly) and he would kill them both. For the night, he laid his body against Altair’s the way he had never been allowed to before, and they fell asleep with the tumble of words still falling back and forth between them.

\--

When they came, there were many of them. Malik heard the scuffle of feet only seconds before he was dragged to his feet. Robert was a monstrosity, not a man, taller than even Altair with enough strength in his body to snap a man in half if the need arose. 

Malik said, “I made him do it.”

Altair was halfway between standing and sitting, staring at him like a long overdue revelation. There was shock in his face and Robert laughed-oh-he- _laughed_. Altair was unarmed and outnumbered but he squared his shoulders and stared Robert down. He said, “I will kill you.”

Robert grabbed him by the throat and Altair tried to kick him back, tried to peel the fingers away from his throat but Robert shoved him against the wall and held him so his feet were dangling. “Not today, painter,” he said. 

Malik opened his mouth but something struck the back of his head and the world went thick and dark and still.

\--

It was inevitable; Malik realized in retrospect.

Every event as planned, the painter with love in his face, his brother like a tease at something he could possess, the slow dragging torture of his body that filled his head with dense clouds and _desperation_. Each piece fit perfectly into the whole, a broken thing held together by thin lines of glue.

\--

He woke up strapped to a surgeon’s table with Robert sitting not-so-far-away. There was a furry shape in his lap, long and uncombed curls between his fingers. His face was placid and unconcerned as he stroked his fingers through the curls. He said, “you understand that your behavior cannot go without consequence. I was fond of you, above the others, and you have embarrassed me.” He closed his fist so the tips of the hair caught between his thick white fingers and he stood. 

Malik did not need to see the head in his hand to know who it belonged to, but Robert made a show of turning it so he could see nonetheless. 

“I think I’ll try to breed you once, when you recover. You are an improvement over your mother, one assumes any child you father might be an improvement over you.” Then he dropped his brother’s head on the table next to Malik’s face and motioned at the surgeon hiding by the opposite wall. 

\--

Malik was property, to be owned and altered at the discretion of his owner.

He was a proper whore and a well-bred investment, securing a fine room and a fine diet. He had the best medical care available.

He sat in his room, with his back to the bed, looking at the window mural painted on his south facing wall. He kept his knees up and his only arm tight against his body. He did not think of the things he had lost (or how he had ever thought that he might have _had_ them to lose) but watch the flicker of the lamplight against the bright colors of the mural. 

\--

At night, when he should have slept, he listened for the sounds of the house settling and he counted out every footstep it would take him to get to the door. He thought about _fire_ and he thought about _blood_ and it kept him warm from the inside out. 

He knew, the way Altair had known once, that one day he would burn the house and everyone in it to gray and dusty ash and he would be free (at last).

\--

But in his dreams, Altair met him in the garden—sitting on the bench in the center of a massacre. Every bloodless-face of the guards that had shuttled him from the floor to his room to bear witness to the many atrocities contained in those walls was dead at their feet. Robert was a fine statue, impaled and dangling. Altair’s hand was reaching out for him—soaked in blood and smiling like a long-overdue revelation. 

“You said you’d never want me,” the man said when their hands touched and Malik shook his head at the foolishness of that.


End file.
